Talk:Roleplay Online

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Archives:

  • Archive 1: Initial discussion (09 Jan 2006 - 10 Jan 2006)
  • Archive 2: Continued discussion ("moderation") (10 Jan 2006 - 11 Jan 2006)
  • Archive 3: Mediation Request Answered; more discussion of ongoing "moderation section" talk (11 Jan 2006 - 17 Jan 2006)

Contents

[edit] Removing advertising from the article

First, a group of random people removed our logo and some other stuff, now this:

To meet Wikipedia's quality standards and conform with our NPOV policy, this article or section may require cleanup.
The current version of the article or section reads like an advertisement.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page. Editing help is available.

C.B 16:47, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

"group of random people" ? I guess I can see where there are some spots that sound advertising-like. The History section won't, by the time I'm done with it. ;) (Still planning to get back to it at some point.) Incidentally I updated the stats while I was here. --Nerwen 68.51.208.100 17:41, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I think it's probably the same person/people. They put that thing on the article without so much as an explanation in the talk page, as is customary for people with concerns to do. I say we edit it only as much as we feel it needs to be edited, remove that thing and if they have a legitimate concern, they can bring it up civilly in here. Sammi 19:07, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm the one who "put that thing on the article" and I did leave an explanation in the edit summary, which can be seen in the page history (diff). I believe my NPOV concerns were justified, but they were all addressed in Banaticus' revision. --Zoz (t) 23:06, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
And it wasn't me who removed the logo. But you should be able to check all my contributions in the page history. --Zoz (t) 23:12, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I just edited out the advertising-related section of the site. For instance, the statistics. RPoL statistics should be in an external link -- Wikipedia articles shouldn't be constantly edited to keep a reflection RPoL statistics current when we can simply give an external link to the RPoL site where the current statistics are always displayed. Additionally, language such as "a site for all ages", "maintains a strong commitment to user anonymity" are advertising buzzwords -- in this day, all reputable sites maintain a strong commitment to user anonymity, requiring a user to only display as much personal information as that user chooses to give out. The initial paragaph has been whittled down to a good overview definition of RPoL, as is proper for a Wikipedia article. The mention of different game types has been moved into the format section. Long and short of it is, the advertising sections of this article have been removed and the article is now in line with what a person would likely see if a mention of RPoL was printed in the Encyclopedia Brittanica (although, I left the list of moderator names in). Banaticus 02:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your effort. --Zoz (t) 23:06, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Format Section

I'm considering adding something like this to the Format section, "Games on RPoL are run in a play-by-post format, which allows people who live in different time zones or who have very small pockets of free time to role-play online." I'd also like to mention the in-game features which help people play this way, such as the die roller, and will think of wording for it once I wake up. cruinne 14:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the dice roller should be mentioned, also things like groups, private messages, private lines in public messages, character sheets that can't be seen by other players... All of those things are important to the way that games can be run on RPoL.--Bigbadron 23:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Keen. I'll come up with some wording soon, unless someone else does in the mean time :) cruinne 15:18, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Hmm...
RPoL was specifically written with gamers in mind, and has a host of features to make online gaming easier. There is, for example, a buit-in dice roller, which is capable of generating scores for dice with any number of sides, from 2 to 10,000, and includes preset roll formats for many popular game systems. There are also facilities to exchange private messages between GMs and players, and for the storage of character details which are only visible to the owner of that character. Each player in any game also has a private "scratchpad" for keeping notes.
Something like that? --Bigbadron 16:21, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
and ... done. cruinne 03:53, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History section

Well, I wrote an outages subsection based off of jase's post in General (and my personal memories of the latter two events). I'm not terribly happy with the level of accuracy for that first one; I wasn't there when it happened and sort of guessed on the details. We could also put in relevant links, such as the WHT thread (page 66 was where the important parts started for RPoL in particular, when subv3rsion first appeared).

However, as-is within the rest of the section, it's too large. Rather than trying to pare down the summary, I'd prefer to see the rest of the section expand. There ought to be more features listed; scratchpad comes to mind as something to mention, also private lines, groups, etc. Whatever else was pivotal. The bit about "RPoL moved to a new dedicated server in 2004" does not belong in the Features subsection, and could become the root of a new subsection on the general chronology of key RPoL-related events.

The scratchpad is already mentioned, along with things like the flexibility of the dice roller, and private messages. They were all included in the edit that myself and cruinne did in the Format/Features section a couple of months ago.--Bigbadron 08:27, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

The part about PBW should probably become a separate paragraph, with more details, as someone suggested in the Outage chatter. If there's a wikipedia page on PBW somewhere, we could link to it. (All I'm finding is a page on "play by wiki" and I'm too lazy to search harder at the moment.) NerwenGreen 06:41, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The part about PbW has no place in this article.
As I commented further up, this is a page about RPoL. The stuff about PbW is not actually relevant to RPoL beyond what it already says: that there was a dispute there, and a lot of users moved over. That's short, accurate, and doesn't sidetrack the page's subject (RPoL = not PbW, or online RPing sites, just RPoL). Anything else is no more relevant to RPoL then the "Links to Similar Sites" which were removed. --Bigbadron 16:47, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
There is an arguable case for being more detailed about the dispute at PbW, BBR. It's all about how much detail is gone into. Currently, the article has stuck to the minimal, which is fine, but there could be room for more detail without sidetracking too far.
For instance, the article says there was a dispute and lots of people left to join RPoL. Well, this doesn't exactly do justice to the event that gets referred to as the 'Exodus' on RPoL itself. It wouldn't take much of a paragraph to give more context, it would just be a matter of remaining NPoV. Seeing as it's a notable event that crops up from time to time on RPoL itself, I can't see the problem with giving a similar explanation here to the one that's normally given when it comes up in Community Chat. Kantiandream 21:22, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, as you just said, it's arguable, which means some people won't agree with you KD, because any details about it are about events that took place at PbW, not at RPoL. Depends on your scope - is the article about RPoL, or about online roleplaying as a whole? I don't see the subject raised much in CC these days, though at the time it was hot news, but explanations have tended to be kept simple, without going into much detail, though at the time they sometimes devolved into arguments. --Bigbadron 05:07, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I am aware of what 'it's arguable' means BBR! :p
The level of detail I think we're talking about here is 'what was the dispute?'. It's context. Yes, it's stuff that happened over at PbW, but it directly impacted the history of RPoL, so I would judge it as a legitimate overlap. Yes, some (like yourself) would disagree, but then, that's why we have a talk page. :D
What I'm thinking of is this: from time to time, 'the Exodus' gets mentioned (not often, true, but on occasion). The explanation given isn't 'there was a dispute and lots of people left'. The explanation given is 'the admin went mad and started deleting games left, right and centre, so a huge amount of people went to RPoL instead'. Now, if you make that NPoV, you get something more like:
'In -insert approximate timeframe here- a dispute between the admin of PbW and a large number of players resulted in several hundred people moving to RPoL, an event generally referred to on RPoL as 'the Exodus'. This was the result of a large number of games being frozen or deleted by the admin, allegedly without reason, leading to a loss of trust in the admin by many users. These users were encouraged to move to RPoL by -insert context that I seem to have forgotten!-'
It's more detail than is minimistically necessary, but it provides background detail that isn't beyond the scope of the article (it wouldn't make the article about PbW or online RP more generally; it would just be background detail to a significant event in RPoL's history). Think about it this way: when I look at the piece you've written, I see 'A dispute between the admin of PbW and users of that site saw several hundred people move to RPoL.' and think 'What was the dispute?'. To be encyclopedic, I think we should anticipate that question. Kantiandream 09:15, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
And if you were to post anything like the "NPoV version" above, it wouldn't actually be accurate, forcing me to come in and correct it. This is why I suggested to Nerwen that if he really did want to include it, that he should speak to somebody who was there at the time. As for the CC version, well that's the sort of crap that used to appear in CC... also inaccurate, but what do you expect?
You want an accurate version?
There was a dispute at PbW when the site admin lost interest in maintaining the site. One person, who approached the admin about this was banned. ONE game was deleted, when a moderator tried to speak up for users point of view. A lot of users left (thinking back, probably 100+) and started looking for another site. Most ended up at PbW after one user spoke to jase and confirmed that he wouldn't object to a lot of new users.
Maybe not as exciting as the CC version, but it has the advantage of accuracy. The game which got deleted was mine, but it still runs at RPoL. Remember though that much of what you regard as some sort of entertaining history was/is somewhat personal to those of us who went through it.--Bigbadron 09:51, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
And the reason I'm discussing this in the talk page rather than throwing in the edit myself is precisely because I don't know all the facts, only what's been discussed in CC before. I was under the impression that more than one game had been deleted; it's good to have that corrected.
I imagine that the entire debacle was more than somewhat personal to those of you who went through it; what's the point in telling me something that's completely obvious? Sorry BBR, but Kantiandream 10:44, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
I wasn't getting annoyed about it, I just don't believe it's relevant to RPoL. You'll notice I even offered to help Nerwen work out a suitable write up of the event. I didn't get even remotely annoyed about it until I read yet another misinformed pile of crap based on half-remembered rumours and speculation in Community Chat, which would have been used as the basis of the rewrite if it hadn't been objected to.--Bigbadron 18:16, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, and I suppose the reason I was discussing the misinformed pile of crap I'd suggested here was because I was itching to insert it as a rewrite in the main article despite being aware that what I was writing was based on what had been said in CC and so was unlikely to be accurate enopugh to go into the main article.
You are wrong BBR. If the paragraph hadn't been objected to, it just wouldn't have been put in the main article until the details had been clarified. Why do you have to be so bloody cantankerous? All you had to say was 'actually, that's not accurate, it should really read like this: blah blah blah'. I'm not Karzak (or whatever his name was), so give me a break! Kantiandream 10:41, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Uh... that's pretty much what I did. Look back, I said "that's not accurate, here's what happened", and was told "I don't understand why you seem to be getting annoyed by this."--Bigbadron 17:44, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I'll leave it here so we don't back and forth forever, but no BBR, you didn't just say 'that's not accurate, here's what happened' and then inexplicably get asked why you were getting annoyed. Re-read what you wrote and try to imagine how it came across from my perspective. Kantiandream 10:47, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, that's very magnaminous of you, considering I wrote pretty much what you said I ought to have. I said that the CC version was nonsense, that your version was inaccurate and needed correcting, and gave a more accurate version. I've also been discussing the more accurate version with Nerwen all along, just as I said I would, right from the start.--Bigbadron 12:13, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


I'm inclined to agree that there ought to be more about the whole Exodus thing, even without going into specifics of the stuff occurring at PBW. For example, what was the magnitude of people who came over? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? What were some of the specific ways that this affected rpol? Downtimes? Disk failures? The webserver host telling jase to leave? (this is what I'm inferring from the history as-is + jase's recent General post.) How about any changes to RPoL's interface to accommodate? How many players were here pre-Exodus and post-Exodus? NerwenGreen 04:15, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Well I'm inclined to disagree. Your question about changes to the interface is interesting - but you can't be too specific about it. For some changes it is fairly clear that the change was influenced by features at PbW, but for a lot of them, things are more vague. Did they happen because of PbW, or would somebody have suggested them eventually anyway and it's just a matter of timing?
However, what about -
A dispute between the admin of PbW and users of that site saw several hundred people move to RPoL. The sudden influx of such a large number of people saw RPoL stretched to its limits. This forced a number of changes, such as an increase in disk space which led to a switch in service providers. However, it also led to a wide range of useful innovations and changes to the interface of RPoL itself, such as the addition of portraits, and many of those changes are still being made.
Just a suggestion.--Bigbadron 05:07, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm. Actually I was hoping you would take charge of writing that whole subsection (as opposed to "helping me do it"), as I already know you're way more qualified to do it than I ever could be. :) I'm really not fond of speaking authoritatively about something unless I know with absolute certainty that I have my facts straight and have done all possible research.
Having said that, I like your version. It stays focused on RPoL, which is as it should be (I agree completely on that point). The question for me (as an uninvolved bystander and possibly representative of the average casual reader) is more "How did it affect RPoL to have several hundred people suddenly appear at the same time?" - their specific origin is not that relevant. Even so, it might be useful to include the phrase "The Exodus" somewhere in the first sentence or two, since that phrase gets used a lot as the name of the Big Event.
What other major events have there been in RPoL history beyond that one? (and the outages) Should we attempt to mention dollsteak in any capacity, as he's another "major event" that seems to come up in the rumor mills from time to time?
As for the interface changes thing - we already have that started with the Features List. That could do with some fleshing out, though someone would have to dig through the old version changes to see when the major stuff occurred.
NerwenGreen 02:59, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay, what about this?
A dispute between the admin of PbW and users of that site saw several hundred people move to RPoL, an event generally referred to as "the Exodus". The sudden influx of such a large number of people saw RPoL stretched to its limits. This forced a number of changes, such as an increase in disk space which led to a forced switch in service providers. However, it also led to a wide range of useful innovations and changes to the interface of RPoL itself, such as the addition of portraits, and many of those involved in the Exodus had ideas for features and improvements that they would have liked to have seen implemented at PbW. Those ideas were put into practice at RPoL instead, contributing to a rapid evolution of the site.
Not sure if you want to go down the whole road of discussing dollsteak here. While he may have had some useful ideas, which were built into RPoL, all the more negative side of him achieved was to get him banned, first from public forums (which had happened at PbW too, and added to the dispute which led to the Exodus), then from the site. Fairness would require any mention of him to include the good ideas, and that might be a problem, since there isn't, AFAIK, a list of who made what suggestions.
Bear in mind that this is a real live person, not some historical character - any mention of him has to be very carefully balanced, or you could end up in an edit-war with him, similar to the recent one that cruinne had to sort out. Mention of individual names in the article, other than the official ones (jase, mods) should probably be avoided.
Note also that there has only been ONE question regarding dollsteak recently, and that a former user trying to get in touch with old friends - this hardly constitutes a constant barrage of requests for information. --Bigbadron 06:46, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
The above looks fine. I'd also refrain from mentioning dollsteak at all; that one looks like it would fall into the category of sleeping dogs! Kantiandream 10:46, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Actually it comes up in casual conversation in the chat channel more often than that. Not constant, but mentioned every once in a while. You're probably right though, we should just omit all that...
Anyway, how about something like this:
In early 2000, a group of roleplayers lost the Bulletin Board system which had been hosting their games. One of them, Jason Roper, decided to create his own website. The result was Roleplay Online (RPoL), which went live at 11:58, Friday 25th Aug 2000. [what timezone? Perth?]
(needs some kind of transitional paragraph about something or other ... surely interesting things happened between 2000 and 2002?)
After a dispute between the administration and several users of Play by Web, several hundred people moved to RPoL in early June of 2002, an event generally referred to as "the Exodus". The sudden influx of such a large number of people saw RPoL stretched to its limits. This forced a number of changes, such as an increase in disk space and bandwidth which led to a forced switch in service providers. However, it also led to a wide range of useful innovations and changes to the interface of RPoL itself, such as the addition of portraits, and many of those involved in the Exodus had ideas for features and improvements that they would have liked to have seen implemented at PbW. Those ideas were put into practice at RPoL instead, contributing to a rapid evolution of the site.
(When was FoRPoL created? a paragraph about that organization (lifted out of the forum, probably)? Ending with the note about funding the new server after Outage 2.)
(here's a list of key features and when they were implemented)(hopefully written in a way that it doesn't make the "format" section redundant?)
Outages ... hmm. Actually, instead of having a separate Outages section, these could just be incorporated into the list of general events. For example, am I right in inferring that the first outage was due to the Exodus?
Just a number of half-digested thoughts on how the section should go. NerwenGreen 10:04, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
FoRPoL came into being in September 2002. The earliest posts in the forum, including one which says "FoRPoL now exists" are dated 24th Sept 2002, though there was a (short) discussion between the founder members before that date (outside of RPoL).--Bigbadron 14:51, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure that the Exodus can be linked so closely to the first outage.
The News link says this -
Date: 01:11, Sun 07 Jan 2001 Poster: woof:
"The CI Host server that RPoL is hosted on is currently running out of physical disk space. They will apparently be adding more disks soon, in the meantime intermittent "out of space" errors may occur."
This would imply that space was becoming a problem more than a year before the Exodus happened in May 2002. Beyond that, the first mention of having to switch to a new server is almost a year after the Exodus (Mar 2003), then more problems in 2004 when the server ran out of space. Also, looking at my first game, which has been running since the Exodus, there are no breaks in the posting which would indicate a major outage, until the 2003 one.--Bigbadron 14:47, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
Hmm... unless the 2003 outage coincided with the Second Exodus? No... the timing is wrong by about 6 months. Oh, well.--Bigbadron 14:59, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

One thing I just noticed is that the "Great Outage" doesn't say what year it happened. :) - knight37

That's because someone removed it. I put it back. :p
Nerwen 168.20.3.124 01:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moderation Section

I've removed the section on moderation seeing how most of us agreed that it was too long and very unnecessary to the article. (And I've archived the last talk page and organized the archives leaving that nifty link above.) cruinne 21:00, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notable Personalities Section

Question: Do we need the area on notable personalities? If so, how could we make it better? cruinne 21:00, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Removed some anonymous edits making the sentence capitalization wrong and just being cute but put a note in there indicating that "jase" is always spelled with a lower-case j on the boards. Anyone who wants to make sure jase is spelled with a lower-case j here should probably come up with a way to say the sentence so that jase isn't the first word of it ;). Linked moderator chat pages for those who have them. cruinne 14:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

ok, i dont think Monkeybot is relevent. 1) he no longer exists. 2) it was WingedMonkeyBot :P
C.B 14:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree, Rhia. The plan's been to bring him back if we can make him more useful, but it'll take some of jase's scripting time to get there I think. Prolly should just remove him for now. I think someone added it as kind of a joke after a discussion on the General boards about RPoL moderating or something. My fuzzy brain can't remember now. cruinne 15:18, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I killed the monkey. :D Kantiandream 09:15, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
But he did not kill no deputy. :D Egrek 18:29, 15 June 2006 (GMT)

Why the obsession over the lower-case j? The section is about jase as a notable personality; your edit makes jase's identity sound incidental to his role. This is counter-intuitive as the heading for the sub-section is 'Jase'. Hence, the sub-section is about jase the person, not the owner of the board whose online personality happens to be jase. It doesn't scan very well. Kantiandream 09:43, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I hope that clarification makes it clearer that the real person is Jason Roper, known on RPoL as jase.


I removed the Moderators list as I do not think it is required to convey the intent and purpose of RPoL. - elSpike out.

[edit] External Links Section

Also: I would prefer to cut the external links section to those only dealing with RPoL; the other things should be available in the articles corresponding to their targets (e.g., "Similar play by post sites" could be added in the article on Play by post games). Yea? nay? cruinne 20:58, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I think elSpike also mentioned something about this previously. Keep the focus of the article on RPoL. Let the other sites make their own articles, I say.  :p
--Bigbadron 21:29, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Lobo: Or we could bug them to link us too :p But whatever works.

Well, not really the purpose of wikipedia (and you wouldn't bug them to put up links to us, you'd just go do it). Regardless, I'd rather not treat this as an ad or a webring. cruinne 23:17, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Removed the links to "similar sites" since they are meaningless to the article, but added a link to the RPoL chatroom. Reorganized them a little, and made them bulletted. cruinne 14:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Statistics

There used to be a set of statistics with number of members, games, ect. Why was this removed? It seems like it would be important.


I believe it was removed because it was felt to be too much like an advertisement thing. Plus, keeping it accurate would be a full-time job. --Bigbadron 19:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

It's now in an external link labelled "Misc Info". In retrospect that's a better idea than having to constantly copy it over. NerwenGreen 23:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

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